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Inspiring
January 14, 2016
Open for Voting

P: Desaturate Highlights and Shadows

  • January 14, 2016
  • 13 replies
  • 3096 views

In retouching there are many times when the highlights (or shadows) are contaminated by colours that should not be there. An example would be interior shots where different light sources were used (say daylight and tungsten), or where a wide angle lens has caused magenta/green shading on a white wall. It would be incredibly helpful to be able to select highlights/midtones/shadows and selectively adjust saturation. If, say, the split-toning slider could slide to the left to decrease saturation that would do the job!

13 replies

Participating Frequently
May 27, 2017


I want to be able to control the saturation of shadows, mids and highlights separately, or using a luminance/saturation curve. Davinci Resolve does it (http://nofilmschool.com/2015/11/simple-trick-make-your-color-grades-look-more-professional) as well as other high end colour grading tools.
This would be a really useful and efficient addition for me and I suspect a lot of LR users for correcting saturation imbalances in different luminance ranges as well as creating some beautiful looks, without having to use local adjustments or export to PS with all the added time and storage space that involves.

Obviously I can use a brush with a saturation adjustment, but to do that for many images is very inefficient if what I really want is just to adjust saturation in shadows say (without affecting contrast - could just use curves if I wanted to change contrast along with saturation), especially if I want to do the same thing for a set of images under similar lighting. 

The way I imagine it working is as a standard saturation control but effectively masked with a curve for a particular luminance range. Could be fixed curves for shadow, mid, highlight, or probably even better a user editable luminance/saturation curve.
Earth Oliver
Legend
May 26, 2017
Let's categorize this under "Keep Dreaming"
Participant
May 24, 2017
I want to second this.  Another example is during weddings. The white dress often picks up blue from sky or yellow from warming filters.  It would be nice to be able to desaturate just the highlights without desaturating the overall color.